Many Path To Tread
by carrigan111
Summary: The children of the Dunedain have stand guard against the taint of Morgoth, however far it spreads. With the puppet Dark Lord Voldermort vanquished, It's time for one very special daughter of the Edain to return home. For while the fate of Under Earth may have been decided, the fate of Middle Earth hangs by a thread.


AN. I'm not JK or JRRT, I don't own anything. I'm just playing with their toys. This is my first fic so please be nice. And if not nice, then please be constructive.

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She slips away from her spot in the middle of the bed entirely un-noticed, despite having to extricate herself from the Dali-ish contortion of limbs. The sun has finally sunk beneath the horizon, and in spite of the chaos, the sorrow and joy, of only hours before, she knows that the Castle sleeps.

She doesn't look back at the occupants of the bed, she may just break if she does. Instead, she looks to the stars, specifically, to the curiously bright constellation rising in the North. From no place on Earth should that constellation be visible. And yet the crown of Beren rises. It's just one more proof.

It's time to leave.

She moves quickly and quietly, the batterd-no longer pink-beeded bag is swept of the floor. An other bag is pulled from its depths; slightly larger, and a non discript greygreenbrown, the colour seeming to shift as it's moved. Along with the bag, is pulled a cloak of a darker yet similar material which is thrown hastily over her shoulders.

The door closes behind her with a soft 'click'.

She finds what she's looking for in, no surprises, the dungeons , behind a heavily warded iron door. Even if it hadn't been her they'd come to hours ago to erect the wards, she still would have known that this is the place. It is the only room in the castle with a guard posted outside the door.

The wards fall as quickly as the guard, the hum as they're dismantled isn't audible but it's heard by the occupants all the same. One cautious blond head peeks around the door, eye's large and frightened in the half-light of the wall sconces.

"G...Granger?"

There's movement within the cell, swift and frantic, and then Lucius Malfoy is filling the doorway, exhausted, and beaten, and bloody, but not remotely broken, while Draco cower's slightly behind. "Is It done?"

"It's done."

"And...and you are...leaving?" His pride, whatever's left of it, won't let him ask what he very much wants to ask, and she's not cruel enough to make him.

"Tonight. Come, I persuaded them to lay him with the rest of the Orders fallen, and we only have another hour before the charm wares off. Bring your family, make sure they make no noise, the halls are patrolled." She catches the confused, questioning glance Draco, throws his father as she turns. Thankfully he's wise enough to keep his mouth shut. His mother is not. And this woman...this woman she owes not a shred of kindness.

The blow that Lucius sends flying into his wifes temple, sending her silently to the floor, is the only thing that keeps her from petrifying the bitch, and shoving her back in the cell.

There's a grunt as Malfoy heft's his wifes unconscious body over his shoulder, and then they're once again following her silently.

Staircase after staircase they climb until at last they find themselves before the doors of the Great Hall. Within, all is silent, the dead need no guard. Well, almost no guard.

"Hello, Hermione." She smiles in spite of herself, at the bright sing-song greeting.

"Hello, Luna. Shouldn't you be sleeping, there will be an awful lot of work for you in the morning you know?" Not all tears are a sorrow, she knows that well enough, but the thought of facing what's to come without Luna, and her father cut's almost as deeply as the years have without her brother.

"Oh I know. I just wanted to say goodbye. Daddy did too, but the forest has stolen Seamus and Ernie, and the trees won't listen to anyone else." She's engulfed, without warning, by spindly arms and an imense heart, and though the trace is very faint in the Lovegood line, It still feel's like home. "Numarie."

"Numarie, Luna." She watches for one breathless moment, as Luna, skips down the darkened hallway, skin shining like starlight through mist, her hair a beacon in the dark, before turning away and bending once again to her task.

The doors to open at a touch of her palm. Within, the world is silence and shadows. Narssisa Malfoy's dumped none to gently into her sons arms, while together, Hermione, and Lucius, march quietly and quickly down the isles of bodies, the dark no threat to their sight. They find him in a corner on his own, his body laid out with none of the reverence of the others. There's a strangled, "Dear Gods!" from the man at her side, a his eye's fall for the first time on the horror inflicted on the man he's could friend, brother, and lover, for twenty years.

"Lucius. LUCIUS?" She has to click her fingers under his nose to drag his attention back to her. "Hold him down. Shoulders to the table." There's fear in every line of his face, but he obeys her. She places her right hand on the gaping wound at Snape's neck, the other over his brow. The blood flows like a torrent the second she releases the charm, but she's already begun pushing. As powerful as Under Earth magic is, hers is stronger, older, and here? Almost completely without limit.

Venom runs clear and viscus from the wound even as the skin begins to knit. Lucius Malfoy's awe filled voice almost breaks her concentration. "I wanted to believe...I always wanted to believe...Father always said, but...this is incredible," He falls again into silence just seconds before she's finished, and unasked, wandlessly conjurs 'Lumos' for her, that she can examine the pink, ropy, but above all, healthy scar, that now adorns his lovers throat.

The 'Boom' on the other side of the doors to the Great Hall is accompanied by a yelp from Draco, and a choked gasp from the man she's just spent so much of herself to heal.

She's at the door seconds later, yanking them open just as the wizard on the other side is raising his staff to knock a second time.

"You're Late, Gandalf."

"A wizard is _Never _late, Valandi, he arrives _Precisely_ when he means to!"


End file.
